‘Not symbol of Republic’: French mayor to remove black Marianne statue from city hall

A "Marianne" bust, the symbol of the French Republic (Reuters / Eric Gaillard) / Reuters

The mayor of a small French town is planning to evict the emblematic statue of black Marianne from the city hall, which has been there for 16 years. The local head claims the black-skinned monument “doesn’t represent the French Republic.”

“That black
sculpture was a Marianne of liberty, but not a Marianne of the
French Republic. She undoubtedly represented something, but not
the French Republic,” Mayor Marcel Allegre from Fremainville
commune, Val-d'Oise department in northern France,toldLe Parisien newspaper.

Allegre, who won local elections in March, last year, has now
ordered a new statue in the city hall. It’s not yet clear what
the new statue will look like.

Marianne, a national symbol of the French Republic and an icon of
freedom and democracy, is seen in many places in the country and
holds a place of honor in town halls and law courts. She is
depicted as a young white woman wearing a Phrygian cap.

Since French revolution many cities erected the statues to the
liberty symbol. One of the best-known Mariannes can be seen in
French painter’s Eugene Delacroix masterpiece ‘Liberty Leading
the People’.

Though Marianne is considered to be a national symbol, there is
no official legislation how France’s liberty symbol should
appear. Recently, statues have appeared depicting Marianne with
black skin. One of such monument can be found in Fremainville, a
town of 495 residents.

The village was the first to host the iconic monument with
African traits in the town hall where civil marriages are
performed in 1999.

“Either we live in a white and racial Republic, and Marcel
Allegre is right, or we live in a diverse Republic, and the mayor
of Fremainville is wrong,” the spokeswoman of Representative
Council of France's Black Associations, Thiaba Bruni, said in a
statement.

The organization said it filed a legal complaint demanding to
sanction the Fremainville mayor. CRAN was also calling upon
France’s National Association of Mayors to pick “black, Arab or
Asian woman” as a new Marianne.

The decision of removing black Marianne sparked a row in social
media.

“In Fremainville (Val d'Oise) the first black Marianne de
France is to be scrapped by the new mayor ..It's stupid,”
tweeted @briens6

“I know her, she is very beautiful. And that's a shame,
especially in these troubled times to do this,” wrote René,
a commenting user on Le Parisien.

There were also some users on Le Parisien website who supported
the eviction of Marianne Noire.

“We need to stop massacring the symbols of our history in the
name of ‘multiculturalism’,” commented ‘JJ’.

“White or black, and why not yellow, our MARIANNE has always
been white because we are in France, until proven otherwise, we
are a white country,” added ‘Freddy’.

Former Mayor of Fremainville Maurice Maillet said that “this
black Marianne was the symbol of Fremainville.”

Later, Marcel Allegre told Le Parisien that he will place
Marianne Noir in another municipal hall.

Black Marianne is also seen in the town of Bobigny, in the
northeastern suburbs of Paris. She has Negroid facial features
and the breasts and protruding belly characteristic of African
statuary of women.